The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

Friday, September 25, 2015

Two new studies have confirmed that this fear is justified. Iran will be able quickly to produce nuclear weapons fuel even under the terms of the JCPOA.

Iran can emerge in 15-20 years, or less, as a nuclear power with
the potential, at a time of its choosing, "to make enough weapon-grade
uranium for several nuclear weapons within a few weeks." – David
Albright, founder and president of the Institute for Science and
International Security.

If sanctions failed to do the job, and if Iran engaged in future
illegal nuclear activity -- no matter how serious -- would the U.S. use
military force? When the U.S. and its allies discovered that North Korea
had illegally built a nuclear weapon and massively cheated on the
agreed framework, did anyone use military force to stop its effort? No.

The likelihood is far greater that the U.S. will look the other way in order not to admit that the deal it agreed to is a dud.

Iran has already repeatedly attacked the United States, from the
murder of 241 Marines in Lebanon in 1983, to the attack on Khobar
Towers; the murder of Americans over Lockerbie; the U.S. embassies in
Tanzania and Kenya; the attack on the USS Cole; has been complicit in
the attacks of September 11, 2001; is still holding four Americans
hostages and, openly, is daily threatening America again.

Congressional supporters of the nuclear deal with Iran (the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) and the P5+1 partners, seem to
see matters from the perspective of whether the International Atomic
Energy Administration (IAEA) and allied intelligence agencies will be
able to detect future Iranian cheating.[1]

Possibly feeling confident that they will be able to, Congressional
supporters may have concluded that the agreement will buy the United
States and its allies sufficient time to re-impose sanctions to ensure
future Iranian compliance with the deal.

Let us assume for argument's sake that the IAEA and allied
intelligence services will, in fact, readily detect Iranian cheating on
the new nuclear deal. This anti-cheating detection capability --
critically important as it is -- would largely entail determining that
Iran was enriching more uranium than allowed or keeping such enriched
material, contrary to the terms of the agreement.

However, is this self-assurance adequate to be sure we will not be facing a future Iranian nuclear capability? No.

Remember the supporters of the JCPOA told Congress in April and May
that they would not agree to a bad nuclear deal but would walk away from
the table and agree to no deal as an alternative? Whatever happened to
that?

According to the President of the United States, in 12 years the
breakout time will be near zero. Although the Secretary of Energy
subsequently sought to clarify that breakout time could never be zero,
the "nuclear beans," so to speak, were spilled.

The real issue, then, is what nuclear weapons capability Iran will
have if or when its rulers decide to break out of the JCPOA agreement.
In short, does the deal in the out-years put Iran in a better position
than today to then break out and produce a small nuclear arsenal? Yes.

Two new studies have confirmed that this fear is justified. Iran will be able quickly to produce nuclear weapons fuel even under the terms of the JCPOA.

First, David Albright, the respected head of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), in a new assessment explains,
"A critical criteria [sic] of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA) is a twelve month breakout timeline for Iran's remaining gas
centrifuge program."

However, he continues, "this 12 month criteria [sic] does not hold if
Iran were to re-install the advanced IR-2m centrifuges during a
breakout. Breakout timelines of seven months result if these centrifuges
are re-installed."

Furthermore, says Albright, the JCPOA's most serious shortcoming is
that it almost ensures that Iran can emerge in 15-20 years as a nuclear
power with the potential, at a time of its choosing, "to make enough
weapon-grade uranium for several nuclear weapons within a few weeks."

Second, according to Greg Jones of Proliferation Matters, the Arak
heavy water reactor will produce spent fuel that, according to the
JCPOA, should be sent out of Iran "within one year from the unloading
from the reactor or whenever deemed to be safe for transfer by the
recipient country."[2]

"A reactor of this design," Jones explains, "will certainly generate weapons-grade plutonium as part of its operation."[3]

A reprocessing plant constructed surreptitiously at a military base
could extract the plutonium from this spent fuel and be converted to a
metal sphere required for a nuclear weapon in a week, in a facility the
size of a "few glove boxes."

Once the plutonium sphere is completed, "it could be mated with the non-nuclear components in a matter of hours."

The Arak heavy water reactor, in Iran, is capable of producing plutonium. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

When the U.S. and its allies discovered that North Korea had
illegally built a nuclear weapon and massively cheated on the agreed
framework, did anyone use military force to stop its effort? No.

Now, let us again concede for argument's sake that the reason the
U.S. did not use military force against North Korea was that the capital
of South Korea, Seoul, happens to be 35 miles from the DMZ, and faces
up to 17,000 North Korean artillery tubes. It was assumed that if the
U.S. used military force to shut down North Korea's nuclear activity,
North Korea would retaliate by attacking South Korea. So the United
States, it was argued, was deterred by the North Korean threat.

But, we are assured, with Iran things would be different because sanctions would be put back in place.

However, the "snap-back" of sanctions, which are meant to enforce
elements of the deal if Iran starts cheating, will realistically not
snap back.

First, the other members of the P5+1 all want to do business with
Iran's new "market" and the $100-150 billion they expect will be coming
to Iran for these expected massive purchases.

And second, as all the business deals initiated prior to the snap
back of sanctions will remain unaffected, the immediate result of "snap
back" sanctions will be minimal at best.

If one looks at the record since 1979, one would not have a lot of
confidence that the U.S. will take effective action, or even action of
any kind, against Iran. If sanctions failed to do the job, and if Iran
engaged in future illegal nuclear activity -- no matter how serious --
would the U.S. use military force?

Iran has already repeatedly attacked the United States,
from the murder of 241 Marines in Lebanon in 1983, to the attack on
Khobar Towers; the murder of Americans over Lockerbie; the U.S.
embassies in Tanzania and Kenya; the attack on the USS Cole; has been complicit in the attacks of September 11, 2001; is still holding four Americans hostages and, openly, is daily threatening America again.

Iran is also responsible for killing between 500 and 1000 American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan with its explosive devices.

This list of Iran's murder of Americans, and others, does not even
include many years of Iran illegally violating its obligations under the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Did the U.S. ever take subsequent military action? No.

Would Iran's retaliatory capability before -- or especially after --
having nuclear weapons preclude future U.S. and allied military action?
In April 2012, a Washington Post story said retaliation could be problematical, warning "Iran bolsters retaliatory capability in the Gulf."

Since then, Iran's military capabilities have markedly increased and will only continue to do so.[4]
This will be especially true with the eventual elimination of the
current embargoes on Iran receiving conventional weaponry and missile
technology. On top of that, Iran will receive over $100 billion in
escrowed oil revenue, in addition to the vast new revenues it is
expected to receive from all the new business it is expected to do.

Supporters of the Iran deal, however, say they are absolutely certain
that if Iran breaks out of the agreement, the U.S. will stop Iran by
implementing "snap back" sanctions. The likelihood is far greater that
the U.S. will look the other way in order not to admit that the deal it
agreed to is a dud.

So far supporters of the JCPOA claim there is no alternative but
going to war with Iran. In reality, the war choice may well be between a
bad war now, when Iran has conventional weapons, or a worse war later,
when Iran has a nuclear capability. Or doing nothing militarily -- which
is largely what the West seems to have chosen for the past 36 years.
Some would suggest that now that option is tantamount to surrender.

There are other choices, but the West seems not to have wanted to
take them. It is not known if the current administration even
investigated them.

What seems clear is that the current administration hoped Iran would
become a regional partner and assumed this deal would get them there.
But what if it does not?

What the current administration muscled though with a contorted vote
from a partisan minority may end up creating a hostile Iranian regional
hegemon that is eventually armed with nuclear weapons.[5]

Supporters say that even if Iran will able to produce nuclear weapons
and have tens of billions more to fund conventional weapons, ballistic
missiles and terrorism, the delay is worth the time bought. At least for
a decade or more (but in reality, possibly far less) there will be no
Iranian nukes appearing on the horizon.

That indeed is the nub of the issue. Although the West thinks it is
buying a temporary contraction in the Iranian nuclear weapons fuel
production capability (if one assumes there are not, nor will be, any
clandestine enrichment facilities), in return what the West gets in the
future is an expanded Iran nuclear military capability that the West hopes Iran will not exercise.

[1] See for example these essays: "Why Saying 'Yes' to the Iran Deal Is Safer Than 'No'," "Senator Corker and the Nuclear Agreement," "Iran deal increases chance of armed conflict," and "Nuclear Distraction: Inattention Has Put The U.S. In Danger"Critically important as well is the history of our intelligence
community downplaying Iran nuclear weapons developments. The US
intelligence community incorrectly assured us for years that Iran did
not have a serious nuclear program -- as they also did with North Korea
and Libya. We are now assured that the community will absolutely
discover whatever bad stuff Iran is up to, even knowing full well -- if
Iran does not subsequently stop whatever it is that we discover-- such
information could lead to war. The Iran National Intelligence
Estimate of 2007 is very illustrative of this problem as well. It was
designed to forestall military action against Iran as it concluded that
Iran's nuclear program had stopped in 2003. We know the "stopped"
description referred to warhead design work only at one facility that
had been discovered (and likely moved elsewhere) and not uranium
enrichment and other nuclear activity. The NIE report was part of a
campaign to take Iran policy off the political table as an issue in the
upcoming Presidential election campaign. If there was no military
nuclear program, then there need not be any debate over whether military
force was required to be used to stop the program. See Wall Street Journal, "Panetta Warns of Iran Threat," by Jay Solomon, June 17, 2010.[2] Gregory S. Jones, "An Iran Nuclear Deal That Spreads Nuclear Weapons," August 10, 2015.[3] Personal communication with the Gregory Jones by the author.[4]
James Clapper, "Worldwide Threat Assessment of the United States
Intelligence Community", Office of the Director of National
Intelligence, Testimony before the Select Committee on Intelligence,
January 29, 2014.[5] Walter Russell Mead reports that the Washington Post
examined the administration's Iran policy and concluded, in Mead's
words, that "... in the course of the negotiations, the Obama
administration has declined to counter increasingly aggressive efforts
by Iran to extend its influence across the Middle East and seems ready
to concede Tehran a place as a regional power at the expense of Israel
and other U.S. allies." See "Why the White House Is Getting Lonelier on Iran," The American Interest, Feb 6, 2015.

What makes the UN Human
Rights Council (UNHRC) ignore such rights violations? The answer is
simple: most of the member states of the Council are themselves the
worst violators of rights of their own citizens, and they are trying to
save each other through a conspiracy of corruption.

When Hamas was raining rockets down on Israel, most members of
the UNHRC seemed unconcerned that Jerusalem might have had moral and
legal obligations to protect its citizens.

The horror is that so many corrupt countries go along with it to
protect their own corruption. More sickening is that countries
pretending to stand for freedom, such as the United States, fund nearly a
quarter of the UN's budget.

It is time for those who truly care about human rights to dismantle this show.

Like it or not, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is a big flop. It
does not care a fig for what it is supposed to do: promote and protect
human rights in general, and freedom of association, assembly,
expression, belief and religion, sexual preference and women's rights
and the rights of racial and ethnic minorities in particular.

The past record of the UNHRC shows it has overlooked rights
violations in a large part of the world in general and the Middle East
in particular. The UNHRC has notoriously been obsessed with inventing
rights violations by Israel, the Middle East's only democracy, where
women and minorities -- the most oppressed sections in most of the
nations in the world -- enjoy equality in law and practice both. Since
March 2006, when the UN General Assembly brought the UNHRC into
existence, it has condemned Israel 61 times, compared to just 55 condemnations of all other nations in the world combined.

How many times has the UNHRC condemned states such as Iran and Saudi
Arabia, which oppress their own citizens -- women and minorities in
particular -- and inspire many states to follow them?

What makes the UNHRC ignore such rights violations? The answer is
simple: most of the member states of the Council are themselves the
worst violators of the rights of their own citizens, and they are trying
to save each other through a conspiracy of corruption.

The mandate of the UNHRC Advisory Committee experts is too
restrictive for them to look into the rights abuses of the states they
themselves belong to. Experts tend to pass time discussing
some vague, high-sounding priorities, initiatives, working methods,
procedural efficiency measures and proposals, such as creating a world
human rights court for ensuring citizen safety and human rights.

Recently, the UNHRC voted on a resolution that condemned Israel for
human rights violations allegedly committed during the 2014 Israeli
strikes on Gaza. Forty-one countries voted in favor of the resolution.
The United States alone voted against it. India, Kenya, Ethiopia,
Paraguay and Macedonia abstained from voting.

The McGowan Davis Commission Report on the Israeli strikes claims
that the Israeli military deliberately targeted civilian areas and
residential buildings. The UNHRC brought it to a vote and called on
Israel and Hamas "to cooperate fully with the International Criminal
Court" -- another unaccountable, biased and politicized group.

Although the McGowan Davis Report also criticized Hamas for violence
against Israeli citizens, its net effect amounted to equating Hamas, a
lawless, terrorist actor, with Israel, a democratic state with a sound
judicial system.

That approach to life is something that most member states of the UN
Human Rights Council have in common with Hamas. Neither group seems to
believe in secular democracy or human rights. The Hamas Charter
preaches the politics of hatred and violence against Israel, but Hamas
does not spare even its own people, whom it used freely during the war
last year as cannon-fodder before the eyes of international television
crews. Hamas threw many of the more progressive Palestinians off the
highest floors of buildings in Gaza when it took over in 2007 and
expelled officials of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah. Hamas
activities have also included the support of the so-called "Axis of
Resistance": Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and the Islamic Jihad.

In June 2014, senior Hamas leaders Khaled Mashaal, Fauzi Barhum, and
Mushir al-Masri praised the abduction and murder of the three Jewish
teenagers.

When Hamas was raining rockets down on Israel,
most members of the UN Human Rights Council seemed unconcerned that
Jerusalem might have had moral and legal obligations to protect its
citizens by resorting to "Operation Protective Edge," aimed at
countering more than 11,000 attacks from Gaza into Israel since Israel
totally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

Given the pattern of lawless, unpunished (often rewarded) behavior of
many member states just now -- such as Iran, rewarded for violating the
Non-Proliferation Treaty by being fast-tracked to building nuclear
weapons; Russia, which invaded Ukraine with no push-back; and China,
which has been building military land-fill islands throughout the South
China Sea while encountering no serious negative response -- why
shouldn't the leaders of Hamas employ a practice illegal under the
Geneva Convention -- using the civilian population in Gaza as hostages
-- to protect themselves, and dub the impending civilian casualties as
"Israeli crimes against humanity"?

By contrast, any perceived infraction by Israel of the even most trivial nature is treated as an international catastrophe.

The horror is that so many corrupt countries go along with it to protect their own corruption.

More sickening is that countries pretending to stand for freedom,
such as the United States, fund nearly a quarter of the UN's budget.

It is time for those who truly care about human rights to dismantle this show.

Jagdish N. Singhis a senior Indian journalist based in New Delhi, India.Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6446/dismantle-human-rights-council Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Iran's Mullahs have friends already, and they sit not in Washington, but in Moscow.

A new round of the "Great Game"[1] in Syria is evidence not so
much of the growing power of Moscow, as of the intellectual helplessness
and degradation of the West

Western leaders, the
media and experts state the obvious: the Kremlin is trying to save
Assad. Of course it is, but principal points remain outside of the focus
of their attention.

It is not only about Syria. It’s about two polar ideologies, two worldviews incompatible with each other.

At
one extreme, we see the time-honored tradition based on the primacy of
national interests and perceptions of those involved as Empire. At the
other extreme, there is a schizophrenic conglomeration of amateurism,
idealism, Neo-Marxism ideology, quasi-religious utopias of the universal
triumph of democracy “for all, here and now” and violently distorted
conceptions of human rights and civil liberties.

The first outlook generates calculating and cynical, but predictable policies. The second one paves the road to hell.

Which geopolitical aims are pursued by Moscow in Syria?

Russia
has only two allies in the Middle East - Iran and Syria. The Kremlin
came to the conclusion that without the direct intervention of the
Russians Assad’s regime would be doomed, because Hezbollah and the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps would not withstand the onslaught of
the Islamists for long.

The fall of Assad’s regime
would jeopardize the Iranian regime as well. Lebanon together with
Hezbollah would not survive, and Shiite government in Iraq would be
threatened by "jihadists". Moscow in that case would lose its influence
in the Middle East completely – such a situation is unacceptable to the
Kremlin.

Obama may cherish illusions that Iran's
Ayatollahs will become US allies for as long as he wants them to, but in
Tehran they even don’t try to conceal their contempt for him. Mullahs
have friends already, and they sit not in Washington, but in Moscow.
Both sides coordinate every step. Commander of the Quds Force general
Qasem Soleimani visited Moscow twice - in August and in middle of
September - where he met with Putin and the Minister of Defense Sergey
Shoygu. On behalf of the Russians, continuous contacts between Tehran
and Moscow are maintained by the Russian President's Special
Representative in the Middle East and Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail
Bogdanov.The
second key point is related to Islamist threat. Putin's calls to
destroy ISIS are not just empty rhetoric. The defeat of Assad would be
the triumph of "jihadists", and the flame of "Green revolution" under
the banner of the Prophet would inevitably spread to Muslim regions of
Russia - the Caucasus, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. It can inflame the
“soft underbelly” of Russia too – secular Muslim republics of Central
Asia.

On September 15-17, presidents of five
countries of The Collective Security Treaty Organization - Russia,
Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan - held a summit on strategic
security issues in Dushanbe. Dushanbe - the capital of Tajikistan - was
chosen for a reason: it is an outpost of Russia on the border with
Afghanistan. Besides the Taliban, it is being infiltrated now by ISIS
agents as well, and Moscow is aware of this danger.

Putin assured the Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, that Russia will support him in any case, but it is impossible
to stop ISIS while remaining entirely on the defensive, and Putin
prefers an offensive campaign. Unlike the Europeans, Russia doesn’t
accept returning "jihadists", who went to fight for the Caliphate -
Russians prefer destroying them in Syria. One of the main aims of
Russians in Syria will be Chechen militants, penetrating into Syria via
Turkey. Russia intends to hunt them, and modern attack helicopters
Mi-28NE called “Night Hunter” have already arrived in Latakia.

The
third point – starting from the 18th century, the Russian Empire, and
after it the Soviet Union, sought to increase its presence in the "South
Seas" - the Mediterranean. It would turn Russia into a leading player
in world politics, would let it go beyond the Eurasian steppes and
dictate its own terms to the West. Over a number of years Putin has been
counting on the development of the Russian Navy, which has become a
strong force.

Russia's principal goal is preserving
Syrian Latakia - its main base in the Mediterranean, and creating new
bases. Obama's mediocre policy facilitates the rapprochement between the
Kremlin and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and today the two countries are
negotiating the construction of a naval base in Egypt. The Eastern
Mediterranean becoming Russian – the aim that was unachievable in the
face of such statesman-rivals as Palmerston, Disraeli, Churchill, Truman
and Reagan, became ridiculously easy with Obama.

The
fourth point - Russia wants to show to the whole world that it is a
power that under no circumstances abandons its friends and allies to
their fate. Putin didn’t betray Assad in his hour of need, and thus made
it clear (for West especially) that “all roads lead to Rome”, i.e., to
Moscow. It was a useful lesson – now all countries in the region apply
for mediation not to Washington, Paris or London, but to the Kremlin.

They
manipulate Obama, cynically obtaining American weapons and technology
from him, but it is Russia that they consider the power capable of
influencing events.

Russia
is not an ally of Israel, but for Netanyahu it is much easier to come
to an understanding with Putin than with Obama, and the involvement of
the Kremlin can prevent the worst-case scenario, such as the supply of
S-300 and upgraded weapons to Hezbollah. It is curious to note that in
numerous interviews to Russian media during a previous visit to Moscow,
that Netanyahu emphasized excellent mutual understanding with Putin.As
far as I know, Moscow planned to offer a deal to Netanyahu: the
participation of "Gazprom" in Leviathan gas field development on the
northern border of Israel in exchange for curbing Iran and Hezbollah.
Blackmail? Yes, to a certain degree, but at least it is much more
explainable than the demands to return to “Auschwitz
borders”[2] immediately.

Point number five. Russia
assumes the mission of the protector of Christian minorities in the
Middle East, in the same way that it protected the Eastern Orthodoxy in
the 19th century, and Great Britain, represented by Lord Shaftesbury
[3], protected Jews in Holy Land.

From 2012, this
role is played by the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society headed by
Patriarch Kirill I of Moscow, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey
Lavrov and the Mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin.

And
eventually, all of these efforts coming out of Moscow are based on the
deep, uncompromising belief in Russia’s rightness and its divine
mission; and not without reason, nowadays, they emphasize the continuity
from Bysantium in Russia.

What does the West
set against Russia? It betrays its allies by encouraging their worst
enemies. This is done senselessly, egregiously, in ways harmful to own
strategic interests. The West betrayed Qaddafi, who successfully
collaborated with Europeans and held back Islamic fundamentalism and
hordes of migrants from Africa. It betrayed Hosni Mubarak, and then
tried to push el-Sisi into a corner, hindering his war with terror – in
the name of the Muslim Brotherhood that hates the West. It betrayed the
former Yemeni President Abdullah Salah, who helped the US in the fight
against al-Qaeda. It betrayed Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf
monarchies in the name of the disastrous deal with Iran, a country which
dreams of destroying the US and doesn’t conceal it.

Yes,
it betrays – in dirty, cowardly and hypocritical fashion - Israel, its
last stronghold in the Middle East, this in the name of the mythical
"Palestinian people" that never existed. This "people" was the inspired
invention of the KGB and the Arab League and turned out to be the "sacred cow" of postmodern culture.

The
US betrayed the friendly Kurds - in the name of "good relations" with
the psychopath Erdogan, whose hatred of the West is no less than that of
Ali Khamenei. It betrayed - in the name of political correctness -
Christians of the Middle East inseparably connected to Christian
civilization.

While Russia is building its Empire,
the West is concerned with self-destruction. This is a "suicidal
syndrome" in the name of "progressive thinking" that killed both the
progress and thinking.

The result of this contest is predictable. History does not like idiots, and especially "useful idiots."

The writer is author of the soon to be published book "Agony of Hercules or a Farewell to Democracy (Notes of a Stranger).”

Footnotes:1.
The “Great Game” was the strategic rivalry between the British Empire
and the Russian Empire for supremacy in Asia in 19-th century;

3.
Lord Shaftesbury (1801 - 1885) advocates of Christian Zionism in
Britain, he was President of the British and Foreign Bible Society.Alexander Maistrovoy is author of the soon to be published book "Agony of Hercules or a Farewell to Democracy (Notes of a Stranger).”Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/17602#.VgRtGJezdds Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The European Union's plan to force poorer nations to accept thousands of refugees.

On Tuesday, national sovereignty gave way to mandatory multiculturalism in the European Union. A plan to relocate an additional 120,000 Middle Eastern migrants was imposed by EU ministers over the objections four Eastern European countries adamantly opposed to the plan. Slovakia’s Robert Fico illuminated the resistance. “As long as I am prime minister, mandatory quotas will not be implemented on Slovak territory,” he declared in Bratislava.

Slovakia was joined by the Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary. Finland abstained from the vote. Yet despite the quartet’s disapproval, the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, led by France and Germany, pushed through the plan proposed by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker during his annual State of the Union address in Strasbourg earlier this month. The plan called for 160,000 migrants to be forcibly redistributed from Italy, Greece and Hungary to all other member states, save Britain, Ireland and Denmark, who remain exempt from EU treaties. In addition, Junker called for a review of the “Dublin system” that determines which EU nation is responsible for asylum claims.

In order to make the plan more politically palatable, 66,000 migrants are currently slated for relocation, joining 40,000 migrants approved for asylum in July. The remaining 54,000 had originally been allocated to Hungary where they are currently camped out. But Budapest refused to abide a plan it characterized as an invitation to economic migrants. Thus, those migrants will be reallocated in 2016, possibly among Greece, Italy, Croatia and Austria, bringing the overall total of relocated migrants to 160,000. The plan is ostensibly limited to Syrian, Iraqi and Eritrean asylum-seekers, but the details have yet to be worked out. All of those migrants are people who have purportedly crossed the Mediterranean Sea from Turkey and northern Africa, fleeing the unrelenting violence in Iraq and Syria.

Luxembourg minister and meeting chairman Jean Asselborn stated that ministers “would have preferred to have an agreement by consensus,” but nonetheless expected objectors to fall into line as required by the law. Germany has been the focus of resentment on the issue, no doubt due to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Sept. 7 announcement that her nation would take 800,000 refugees this year at a cost of $6.6 billion ,and 500,000 per year over the next few years. Less than a week later, German interior minister Thomas de Maizière announced Germany would be imposing border controls in the southern part of the nation for what Merkel called “urgent security reasons.” Austria and Slovakia followed Germany’s lead shortly thereafter as wishful thinking gave way to the inconvenient reality of as many as half a million migrants flooding into the EU.

The plan itself, whereby the tens of thousands of migrants landing in Italy and Greece will be involuntarily moved by their respective national police forces to other EU nations is the epitome of wishful thinking. Those police forces are already overwhelmed, and the plan to relocate migrants bore little resemblance to the reality expressed by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC), which insists 120,000 people represents just six days’ worth of arrivals at the current influx rate. "A relocation programme alone, at this stage in the crisis, will not be enough to stabilise the situation,” insists UNHRC spokeswoman Melissa Fleming.

Fleming is correct. After Hungary closed it border, refugees headed west towards Croatia, and that nation allowed tens of thousands to cross into Europe. Now Croatia has blocked off part of its border with Serbia, because they can’t process migrants fast enough. It noted that 35,000 migrants crossed its border in the week following the Hungarian shutdown. In the Austrian town of Nickelsdorf, 8000 new arrivals filled the town square, as local officials insisted no accommodations were available because existing camps were full. And of the more than 4 million migrants that remain in countries near Syria, at least 270,000 Syrians have requested asylum in Europe.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban expressed the sense of frustration felt by many in the EU. "They are overrunning us,” he told his nation’s Parliament. "They’re not just banging on the door, they’re breaking the door down on top of us. Our borders are in danger, our way of life built on respect for the law, Hungary and the whole of Europe is in danger. Europe hasn’t just left its door open but has sent open invitation... Europe is rich but weak, this is the worst combination, Europe needs to be stronger to defend its borders.” Hungary has passed a law allowing the army to use rubber bullets, tear gas and net guns to maintain control over migrants on its border.

Unsurprisingly Orban was criticized by European colleagues, such as Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek, who, prior to Tuesday's meeting, declared Eastern European foreign ministers were "absolutely dedicated" to finding a solution with their EU partners. Since the Czech Republic was one of four nations utterly opposed to the agreement, such optimism was short-lived. “Soon we will find out that the emperor has no clothes,” he tweeted after the plan was announced. "Reason lost today.”

One suspects reason was never in play. As The Telegraph’s Janet Daley warned earlier this month, European elitists have used the now famous image of a dead child washed up on a Turkish beach “to support the notion of Western guilt,” even as Bashar Assad’s murderous regime gets a pass. "For some reason, the appalling photographs of the bodies of children who had been deliberately gassed by the Assad regime, laid out on a concrete floor in Syria two years ago, were not sufficiently moving to compel the world to take action,” she writes. "Are dead children only a moral outrage when they are on the beaches of Europe?”

Elitist outrage is more like it, as Daley notes Germany’s magnanimity, which they and other economically advanced EU nations can afford, stands in stark contrast to the economically struggling eastern bloc nations that must initially accommodate that high-mindedness. "Imagine if you were a poor householder, just managing to keep your financial head above water while you attempted to turn your circumstances around, and a very wealthy neighbour decided to throw open his doors to the needy – and one obvious way that those in need could reach that welcoming haven was by tramping through your house," Daley explains. "Might you find yourself inclined to be unhelpful in the hopes of discouraging others from taking the same path?”

Millions of ordinary Americans are undoubtedly pondering the same question. In addition to the hordes of illegals embraced by our own ruling class, the Obama administration intends to "significantly increase” the number of “worldwide migrants" this nation takes in over the next two years, reaching a total of 100,000 by 2017. Apparently the reality that the legal and illegal immigrant population in the United States has reached a record-breaking 42.6 million, or about one-out-of-eight residents in the U.S.—more than double what it was in 1980—remains insufficient with regard to the “fundamental transformation of the United States” the American left desires. And while the similar elitist-driven multicultural force-feeding devolving the Europe ethos is much more immediate, make no mistake: both are equally inexorable should current trends on both sides of the Atlantic continue.

In Europe, the bill is coming due for a continent that largely relied on America to do the heavily lifting in response to Islamic terrorism, even as it remained largely contemptuous of the “vulgarities” associated with a military response to the problem. America is facing the twin deficits of a ruling class determined to shove illegal immigration down the throats of a recalcitrant public, and a feckless Obama administration whose foreign policy of phony red lines in Syria, leading from behind in Libya, untimely troop withdrawal in Iraq, and the apparent determination to manipulate intelligence regarding ISIS in the administration’s favor, has precipitated the largest refugee crisis since WWII.It is a refugee crisis tailor made for ISIS and other Islamic terror groups to exploit with impunity. On both continents, Third Worldism, in all its attendant dysfunction, is "breaking the door down on top of us,” even as our unconscionable leaders bemoan those who resist the cultural Armageddon it represents. Leaders whose ongoing love affair with multiculturalism is nothing more than an apology for the Western culture they disdain, even as millions of those Third Worlders are irresistibly drawn to its cornucopia of bounty and beneficence. Bounty and beneficence they will ultimately undermine with the blessings of the apologists who, despite this massive flow of humanity in only one direction, believe no culture is better than any other. It doesn’t get more ironic—or suicidal—than that.

Arnold Ahlert is a former NY Post op-ed columnist currently contributing to JewishWorldReview.com, HumanEvents.com and CanadaFreePress.com. He may be reached at atahlert@comcast.net.Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260225/mandatory-muslim-immigration-eu-arnold-ahlert Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The disaster on the horizon is there for all to see.

In these days I am very worried about Sweden. Never
before has the disastrous immigration policy that Sweden implements
been so obvious in its failure, as it is these days, when Europe is in
the middle of a refugee crisis. Each week, Sweden receives thousands of asylum seekers from the Middle East. At
the same time, there are three important questions that the Swedish
government cannot answer. The Swedish government does not know where
these tens of thousands of asylum seekers will live, how they will be
working and how this new wave of immigration will be financed.

Sweden is today going through its worst housing crisis in 50 years. The figures are frightening. According to Boverket, the Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning, Sweden needs to build half a million homes by 2020. But the government's costly housing initiative that will cost $387 million annually will only lead to 250,000 new homes by 2020. That is the situation today. How the situation will be after the refugee crisis, and how many homes will be needed by then, no one knows. But a whole generation of Swedes will grow up in a society where homelessness will become part of everyday life.

According to the municipal housing office, Boplats Syd,
in 2014 you had to wait 1049 days on average in a queue before you
could get a tenancy in western Scania, an area where Sweden's third
largest city, Malmö, is included.

In August, Sweden had an unemployment rate of 7 percent. Among young people (15-24 years) in Sweden, the unemployment rate in August was 20 percent. This means that one in five young people in Sweden are unemployed. Unemployment among young people born abroad is 70 percent higher than unemployment among young people born in Sweden.

Most
economists in Sweden agree that the asylum seekers coming to Sweden
will find it difficult to get jobs in the Swedish labor market, since
Sweden is the country in the European Union with the lowest number of
low-wage jobs. 2.5 percent of people who work in Sweden have low-wage jobs. This is extreme even in a Scandinavian context, when the same figure for Finland, Denmark and Norway is 5.9 percent, 7.7 percent and 7.3 percent, respectively. In other words, it is difficult to get your first job in Sweden, a painful fact which affects immigrants and young people. The asylum seekers coming to Sweden will probably face prospects of unemployment for several years.

When the new center-left government took over last year, Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson's first message to the Swedes was that the "barns are empty." In a Swedish political context, this means that government finances are weak. This message was followed up later with the government saying that it could not afford any major reforms. Thus,
it is unclear how Sweden will finance this wave of immigration, where
thousands of people from the Middle East arrive in Sweden every week.

Already in February 2015, before the refugee crisis began in earnest, the Swedish Migration Agency announced that it needed an additional $2.2 billion to finance its operations. Because
adequate housing is lacking in Sweden, the Migration Agency has to pay
for migrants' accommodations, which means that the more asylum seekers
come to Sweden, the more the Migration Agency's costs increase.

Even
the municipal costs will increase as newly arrived migrants often
become a heavy financial burden for schools and social services. Sweden already has high taxes. This migration wave cannot be funded by taxpayers when the "barns are empty."

Today, no politician in Sweden can really explain how this wave of migration is going to be financed. The only option that remains is to impair the social safety nets in Sweden in order to finance the migration wave.

Amidst this dystopian situation where it is obvious that Sweden is
facing a socio-economic and geopolitical disaster, there are influential
people in Sweden who want to get as many migrants as possible into the
country. The Swedish aviation industry has asked
the government to amend regulations so commercial airlines can fly
non-European nationals seeking asylum, to the European Union. Most newspapers in Sweden celebrate the people who welcome asylum seekers to Sweden. Traffickers smuggling migrants to Sweden are portrayed as heroes in the media. Recently, Swedish police officers uploaded a movie on social media where they welcome refugees to Sweden. Celebrities and newspapers call for tax increases so Sweden can accept more asylum seekers.

But
while large parts of the Swedish establishment want to open Sweden to
the asylum seekers from the Middle East, Sweden is isolating itself in a
European and Scandinavian context. Other countries in Europe are not so enthusiastic about receiving too many migrants. In Finland, people are demonstrating against asylum seekers and Denmark sends the asylum seekers to Sweden. Germany has temporarily left the Schengen Agreement and introduced border controls. Sweden and its migration policy are isolated and seem extreme in the European and Scandinavian context.

Already the migrants who come to Sweden have started to protest. Asylum seekers require homes and jobs, and when they do not get this the reaction becomes anger and frustration. Right now, about 7,000 asylum seekers come to Sweden on a weekly basis. If
the number of asylum seekers coming to Sweden each week does not
increase, which it will do, more than 90,000 additional asylum seekers
will come to Sweden before the end of the year. There will not be job opportunities or housing for them.

With the migration policy that Sweden has now it is inevitable that unrest will break out next year, or sooner. It
is important to understand that Sweden is a country with 9.5 million
inhabitants. More than 50 per cent of the Swedish municipalities have no
more than 20,000 inhabitants. During this
year and the next, many of these Swedish cities will undergo radical and
irreversible changes due to the migration waves.

When
instability begins in Sweden, it will be important to remember that the
figures that showed what a disaster Sweden was heading towards
were there for all to see. Sweden, whose
cities often have less than 20,000 people received more than 100,000
asylum seekers in one year, but it had no homes or jobs to offer these
asylum seekers. There is every reason to be worried about Sweden now. Sweden is sailing against the perfect storm.

This "refugee crisis" could be a death knell
for Western nations, because Islam arrives not to "blend in." It
arrives to take over

The
1,400-year-long cycle of Islamic violence is fed not by injustice or
fresh new assaults on sovereignty. Rather, it pre-exists the rise of
Western capitalism by several centuries, and it constitutes the heart of
the Muslim world. The cycle is fueled by Muslims' fundamental
organizing principle: Islam.

There
is no place on Earth where a significant population of Muslims are
present that does not also live with regular Islamic-inspired violence
and disruption. This applies to both Muslim enclaves in Western
democracies and Muslim-dominated nations around the world. Where Islam
is, violence and civil tension follow.

Are
all Muslims like this? No, they aren't. Just as all Catholics don't
abstain from eating meat on Fridays during Lent, there is a continuum of
adherence to religious principles found in Islam. However, every
religion has its universally accepted core elements – shared tenets that
are foundational to the faith.

It is the "supremacist" core element of Islam (note: this is an aspect
of Islam, not a perversion or interpretation) that ensures the
reliability of the cycle. The battle is the aim – the jihad that cannot
rest until the Earth has submitted entirely to Islam.

What
does this mean for the United States? The Obama administration is
pledging to accept tens of thousands of "refugees" from Syria and Iraq.
Recent reports indicate that this number may rise exponentially in
coming months. The
United States has already accepted hundreds of thousands of Muslim
immigrants from around the world, and to date, their assimilation into
American society is proceeding at a snail's pace, if at all.

Warnings
have been issued by European governments that terrorists (elements of
ISIS and al-Qaeda) have inserted themselves into the stream of Muslim
migrants currently invading Europe.

This
warning, while important, misses the larger issue entirely: that the
importation (en masse) of Muslims brings with it an ideology bent on the
destruction of the host nation. Islam arrives not to "blend in." It
arrives to take over.

By
some estimates, the composition of the "refugee" arrivals is upwards of
70% males of military age. War refugees flee their countries with
wives and children, while migrants traveling for economic opportunity or
other reasons typically send a father or son ahead to prepare the way
for the rest of the family to follow.

There
are certainly some war refugees amid the masses currently flooding
Europe, but they are just as certainly a minority of the whole, and the
likelihood that these Muslim men, coming from Muslim-dominated nations,
intend to culturally assimilate into the societies of Europe is
statistically nil.

Over
the coming months, America will be asked (then told!) to accept "our
share" of "refugees." Incomprehensibly, these "refugees" will be almost
entirely Muslim, despite the fact that it is the Christian and other
non-Muslim residents of the region who are truly in danger, with tens of
thousands already slaughtered and enslaved as a part of the current
pogrom of subjugation under the heel of Islam.

It
has been said that just because a group of Sunni Muslims is fleeing
extermination from a group of Shia Muslims – or vice versa – that
doesn't mean that either is innocent in the conflict. Should the
pursued become more numerous than the pursuers, they will immediately
turn and put their former tormenters to the sword. Each flees from each
other, but neither is really a "refugee."

It
is important to ask, if this is indeed a refugee crisis with hundreds
of thousands fleeing their war-torn homelands, why now? The Syrian
civil war has been going on for years. ISIS has been operating for
nearly as long. It seems reasonable to conclude that the genesis of
this migration lies elsewhere.

If
you are a well-informed reader, then you have heard the term
"civilizational jihad," the process by which Muslims seek to overwhelm
host nations through immigration and the exploitation of Western values
of religious tolerance and liberty.

The
present surge of Muslims into Europe is not a spontaneous response to
deteriorating conditions in the Middle East. Instead, it is a carefully
orchestrated migration to swell the populations of existing Muslim
enclaves in Europe to the breaking point.

The
subsequent social disruptions will have native Europeans calling for
action to bring the migration to a halt by any means necessary. In the
mind of the Muslim Brotherhood (at whose behest this "migration" began),
it is a win-win.

Ideally,
the Europeans will grow so uncomfortable with the influx of Islamists
that they'll support increased action to remove Assad, thereby
restarting the "Arab Spring" and handing the Brotherhood an essential
jewel for their planned caliphate crown.

At
the very least, the cause of civilizational jihad will be advanced more
in a matter of months than it would have progressed in decades of
orderly immigration and high birth rates.

Either scenario is catastrophic for the West and is functionally equivalent to giving Typhoid Mary an unlimited EuroRail pass.

We
screen new arrivals at the border for diseases because we don't want to
permit the importation of infections to which we have little or no
natural immunity. In the case of Islam, we are indeed importing the
infection itself, subsequently refusing to quarantine the carriers from
the native population out of a misguided sense of tolerance.

Germany
has committed to accepting millions of Islamic "refugees" over the next
ten years – 800,000 this year alone, followed by half a million more
each year thereafter – in the hopes that the infusion of new laborers
can offset the ridiculously anemic birth rate of native Germans.
Combine migration at such extreme levels with a government so enamored
of multiculturalism that they will prosecute their own citizens for
speaking against the policy, and you have the stuff of an invasion.

Under
what circumstances has any nation permitted an influx of a different
culture at such extreme levels and remained sovereign? I'll give you a
hint…it hasn't ever happened. Ever.

Unless
Germany reverses course, it will become a Muslim nation within 15
years, and native Germans will live under the rule of their new Muslim
overlords, dhimmis in their own land.

Remember,
someone asking for political asylum is not guaranteed to be deserving.
Each of the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was an
asylum seeker when they arrived on our shores. How'd that work out?Joe Herring writes from Omaha, Nebraska and is the communications director for the Global Faith Institute. www.globalfaith.org. He welcomes comments at communications@globalfaith.org.

A very ugly picture of the ways of the power
elite, using government, foundation money, and influence peddlers to get
what they want.

The
slow-motion exposure of emails related to Hillary Clinton’s tenure as
secretary of State is revealing the way things get done at the upper
reaches of government and society, and it is a very ugly picture,
indeed. Most Americans (75%)
now believe that corruption is widespread in government, and they don’t
know the half of it. Newly released emails obtained by Politico reveal
how correct they are, and as the old saying goes, the scandal isn’t so
much the laws that may have been broken, but what is legal and perfectly
normal these days among the power elite.

Rachel Bade of Politico
traces the web of influence-peddling centered on “consulting” firm
Teneo, which eventually employed Hillary’s very close aide, Huma Adedin
(aka Mrs. Anthony Weiner, aka Señora Carlos Danger), while she was still
on the public payroll, in a highly questionable arrangement. The
object of the emails was to obtain an unsalaried presidential
appointment for a client of the firm. What makes this all the more
revealing is that the client was the head of a big-money nonprofit,
Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation. This
taxpayer-subsidized, purportedly public-spirited organization paid Teneo 5.7 million dollars in
2012 alone! That’s an awful lot of “public relations work.” Why is
money being diverted from medical research or whatever to an
influence-peddler, in order to burnish the résumé of the president of
the foundation? Oh, and one more thing: the Rockefeller Foundation is a
“huge” donor to the Clinton Foundation.

The emails tell quite a story:

In
the April 10, 2012, exchange, Teneo President Doug Band — a close
confidant of Bill Clinton — asked Abedin to help him get Rodin nominated
to the President’s Global Development Council, an unpaid post.The
Rockefeller Foundation at the time was both a Teneo client and a
Clinton Foundation donor — and Band made that point in his email to
Abedin.The email subject line read: “She is expecting us to help her get appointed to this.”“Judy
rodin,” he wrote to Abedin in the shorthand email. “Huge foundation/cgi
supporter and close pal of wjc[.] Teneo reps her as well[.] Can you
help?”“Wjc” is often used as shorthand for Bill Clinton. And “foundation,” likely means Clinton Foundation. (snip)In
the message to Abedin, Band forwarded along the full conversation,
whereby multiple Teneo employees openly discussed who in power they
could contact to help get their client Rodin assigned to the new post.“Could
someone from [Sen. Chuck] Schumer’s office place a call to the WH?”
Orson Porter, senior vice president of Teneo, asked Tom Shea, the
managing director.“Doug
is willing to push with Valerie or HRC, but I can’t find out who the
decision maker is,” Shea replied, perhaps referring to Valerie Jarrett, a
senior adviser to President Barack Obama.Eventually, Porter sent the email up the chain to Band.“Hey
brother — it’s been a lift in the [W]hite [H]ouse,” he wrote to Band.
“She is not on anyone’s friend list — VJ’s office promised to send it up
the flag pole, but they will need to hear from someone outside of us — I
keep pushing Tom to have a congressional office send a note. Do you
think Bruce Reed would be helpful?”Reed was Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff.Porter, in a separate message a few minutes later, told Band “a [H]uma call to USAID would be helpful.”Band forwarded that to Abedin with his short note.More
than a month later, Teneo checked up on their request. Forwarding the
entire conversation again to Band, Orson wrote on May 22: “DB, I haven’t
heard anything from the WH on this appointment (Judy R_. Did you have
any luck with the State Department?”Band again forwarded that to Abedin, who two days later sent the message to her Clinton email. (snip)Ken
Miller, who would go on to become a senior adviser or with Teneo
Holdings, reached out to Abedin to arrange “a time to discuss Doug Band
and Teneo” sometime in early July 2012. It appears he was considering an
opportunity with the company and wanted her take.“I
am considering doing something with them and would value your
perspective,” Miller, then president of Ken Miller Capital, wrote July
2, 2012.

As
Politico notes, it is still unclear when Huma began her work for
Teneo. But whether or not she was in an active conflict of interest at
this point, these emails establish conclusively that millions of
nonprofit dollars were changing hands as influence was attempted to be
exercised to win a favor and prestige for a foundation executive. The
picture is one of people operating at the pinnacle of institutional
prestige in order to enhance their position in the power elite, and
using vast resources donated as “charity.”